The Pathway of Beauty, the Pathway of Peace and Strength, the Pathway of the Great Quiet, is within. This is the Pathway that the great Sages and See… - Gottfried de Purucker

Before the lower 'occult powers' of any kind are cultivated, man must learn the first lesson of the Higher Occultism, the mystic knowledge, which is to control himself; and all powers that later he gains must be laid on the altar of impersonal service - on the altar of service to mankind.

Among the most momentous questions that every thinking person asks are: Where do we come from? Who are we? And where do we go at death?...It is questions like these that occur to the thinking mind when it also reflects upon the nature, origin, and destiny of the worlds which bestrew the spaces of infinitude. Whence came they? What are they? What is their destiny? They are questions which must have answers. The mere fact that these things are, shows that there are answers to be had somewhere. (Chapter 1)

All that they have - which means all that they are - all that they have evolved to, all that they have become, they have gained by self-devised efforts in individual evolutionary growth.